


The Case of the Stratford Stabber

by TheWhiteLily



Series: Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2016 [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221Bs, And apparently he can sing, Awesome Sally Donovan, Bring the goggles of your choice, Community: watsons_woes, Drabbles, Ficlets, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I hope, John Watson Whump, John is a Very Good Doctor, Light Romance, M/M, Or possibly just bromance, but we knew that already, single story, who knew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-19 13:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 4,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7362721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWhiteLily/pseuds/TheWhiteLily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A case has gone bad, John's priorities are even worse, and Sherlock's left applying pressure.</p><p>This story contains my entries for Watsons Woes July Writing Prompts, which I have attempted to link into a single narrative.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just Winded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It would be a shame if that was for nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 1st: 'Tis But a Scratch

“Go!” gasped John, clutching his chest and flapping the other arm at Sherlock’s uncertain face. “Winded me!”

The thug didn’t have a knife anymore, after all, and it would be a shame if that was for nothing.

Sherlock stopped wavering and ran after the man they’d been tracking for weeks, unwilling to lose him for anything short of a mortal wound.  Once he was gone, John let himself slide down crumbling bricks to the alley floor, pressing one hand’s fingers into the frothing blood around the hilt as he dialled.

“Greg,” he wheezed, when the line connected. “Backup. And ambulance.”


	2. It's how you get your kicks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rewind: bringing a gambler to a knife fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 2nd: Roll the Dice

The thug whirled in the alley, made brave with just John on his heels.

Two options flashed in the face of his wavering knife. Fall back: risk him getting away and killing again. Or engage: delay him, take the risk he had more training than they’d guessed.

Sherlock had circled around, heading the man off—he’d arrive any moment—and John had always been a gambler.

John’s blow landed solidly and both of them staggered back, reeling.

The murderer turned and ran, knife gone from his hand, as Sherlock cleared the corner.

Sometimes a gamble paid off. Sometimes it didn’t.


	3. One deduction too late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock couldn’t imagine why John’d had trouble putting the thug down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 3rd: Cardboard Box (fill #1)
> 
> I tried twice to fill with a drabble, but both times I ended up with a 221B. Oh well, have them both to make up for the oblique relation to the prompt.

Sherlock took two glancing blows before he managed to land a clean hit, crumpling the thug like cardboard.  He couldn’t imagine why John’d had trouble putting him down: whenever the two of them sparred, it seemed boxing and baritsu couldn’t match up to army training.

The man’s hand, he observed, cuffing it to a handy fire escape, had a smear of blood on the tip of the thumb, and—ah yes: a matching bloody stripe on the back of his foreknuckle.

Sherlock rotated the image of the hand holding a knife in his mind palace, the angle of driving it in, knuckles brushing the victim—right size, right shape—this was _definitely_ the ‘Stratford Stabber’ as the press dubbed him.

But where was his knife?  Come to think of it, where was John?  He’d been caught solidly in the sternum, winded, but it didn’t usually take him long to get his breath back…

And then another image clamoured for attention.  John: clutching his chest, white-faced and gasping.  The Stratford Stabber: pulling back from him empty handed… _of course_ he was empty handed by _then_.  John: waving Sherlock on, his arm obscuring the knife sunk cleanly between his fourth and fifth ribs.

John.  Dying.  Alone.

“Oi!” the thug yelled at his back.  “You can’t bugger off and leave me like this.  BASTARD!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boxing?  Crumpling him like cardboard?  Cardboard?  Box?  Get it?  Oh, never _mind_.


	4. Physician, Heal Thyself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John wasn’t feeling up to a quiz first thing after a big weekend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 3rd: Cardboard Box (fill #2)

“John, we’re on our way,” said Greg.  “Ambulance will be five minutes.  Stay with me.  John?” 

John’s fingers didn’t seem to be working properly anymore.  The phone dropped, but the tinny, distressed voice kept buzzing from a long way away.

“Don’t worry,” John reassured it.  “‘M a doctor.”

He had to take a break from talking then, because breathing was getting hard, and someone was shaking him.

“John, you reckless idiot, what do I do?   _JOHN!_ ”

John’s chest exploded with pain, and he pushed weakly at the pressing hands.

_MR WATSON, DIAGNOSIS!  The class is waiting…_

“Chest wound,” managed John, desperately buying time through the fog of confusion.  He knew this one.  “Short breath.  Blood froth.  Pneumothorax!” he announced in relief and then started coughing weakly.

_Obvious, Mr Watson.  Treatment?  Or would you prefer to let your patient die while you and Stamford discuss your weekend?_

“No!” protested John, outraged.  He was so tired.  He and Mike must have been out all night for a hangover like this.  “Chest drain.”

 _Do we_ look _equipped with a chest drain, Mr Watson?  Next option!_

John opened heavy eyes and looked around a treatment room strewn with rubbish—and a torn cardboard box stacked with bags of half-eaten takeaway.

“Wrap.  Plastic bag,” he said.  “Flutter seal.  Air out.  Not in.”

Then everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah, we're all about the cardboard boxes here.


	5. The Surgeon’s Knife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock goes apocalyptic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 4th: Horsemen of the Apocalypse
> 
> This is a double 221B, because apparently I’m inventing my own short formats now.  Yes, there is a B at the halfway point as well, because apparently I’m just that obsessive.

The squad car screeched in to park behind the ambulance, and Greg spilled out onto the pavement before Donovan had even reached for the handbrake.

“Mr Watson!” Sherlock was shouting incoherently as an EMT dragged him back from the blood-soaked man propped against the alley wall.  “You will _not_  give up on this patient!”

“Swear to fulfil,” muttered John without opening his eyes, before the oxygen mask went over his face, stifling whatever he was trying to say.

Sherlock shook off the EMTs as Greg reached them, but he didn’t attempt to return to John.  He just stared for a moment without moving and then spun on his heel and strode away down the alley.

“Where are you going?” asked Greg, then made the connection.  “Oh no.  Sherlock, no!  Just tell us where he is, all right?  We’ll take him from here.  He’ll pay for what he’s done—pay the _right_ way.”

“Pay?” asked Sherlock, stopping in his tracks, and when he turned his face was terrible in its blankness.  “ _Of course_ he’ll pay.  I’ll deduce his deepest secrets and wage war until I _break_ his mind.”

“Uh,” said Greg, because that didn’t sound too bad unless you _knew_ Sherlock.

“I’ll wrap my hands around his throat and starve him of oxygen, as he forced John to struggle for every breath.”

Although that did.  “Sherlock…”

“And then,” said Sherlock with bleak certainty.  His eyes fixed on Greg were utterly empty.  “When he’s sorry that he was ever born, that he ever _dared_ to touch the bravest and kindest and wisest man I know, I will _exterminate_ him like the pestilential vermin he is.”

“Sherlock…”

“I.  Will.  Kill—”

“Freak!” snapped Donovan harshly.  When Greg looked at her, stunned, her eyes were bright, fixed on Sherlock.  “ _John_ will want you there when he wakes up.  God knows why, but he’ll need you _there_ , not locked in a cell somewhere after proving how wrong he is about you.” 

“Outweigh,” mumbled John from behind them, voice muffled by the mask as he was loaded onto the stretcher.  “Surgeon’s knife.”

Donovan tossed the portable radio she’d pulled from the glove-box to Greg, who caught it automatically, and then she turned back towards the car, giving the EMTs loading the stretcher a wide berth. 

“I’ll drive,” she said over her shoulder.  “You can tell Lestrade how to find the scum who did this on the way.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Sherlock followed, his face still unsettlingly devoid of expression.

A minute later, the radio in Greg’s hands crackled a connection, and Sherlock’s voice came over the waves as clear and cold as usual. 

“Follow the alleyway back…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The full line from the Hippocratic Oath that John recites is: "I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.”


	6. Oh, better far to live and die!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is John's brain on drugs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 5th: A False Moustache
> 
> /o\ I can't believe I managed to tie this in.

_—stop this bleeding.  Give him two units of O negative, and prep him for—_

“—theatre out there, John!  It looks like a full house for opening night!”

“Mike, I’m not sure I can do this…” said John, his chest tight with anxiety.  It was altogether possible, given he couldn’t seem to draw a full breath, that he was having a panic attack.  He couldn’t sing like this.  He wasn’t even sure if he remembered any of his lines.

Peeking around the curtain, John tried to get a better look at the murmuring audience as they noisily shuffling into their places.  He blinked at the sudden shock of the dazzling stage lights coming on, trying to get his eyes to adjust to a spotlight that seemed to be shining directly onto him.

“Come on, John,” said Mike bracingly, looking more than usually ridiculous in Ruth’s ruffled bustle, an enormous fake bosom, and greying wig.  The one person whose costume John couldn’t claim was worse than his own puffy shirt, too-tight breeches, floppy-topped boots and a bloody _sash_.  Of course, given it was _Mike_ , he seemed as completely unselfconscious as usual.  “I know you—as soon as the adrenaline hits, you’ll be fine.  That’s how you landed Frederick, after all.”

“Hah,” said John bitterly. 

Mike had talked him into auditioning for the chorus as a lark, told him it was where all the girls would be and somehow John had walked out with the romantic lead and a script so long it rivalled one of their anatomy textbooks.  Which, of course, didn’t get him out of memorising _them_ as _well_.

John rubbed at the itchy, plasticky moustache obscuring his mouth, the shape of it strange and unpleasant, but phantom hands forced his own down to his sides again.

 _Is he still_ conscious _?  When’s the damned anaesthetist getting here?  What’s his name?  John, John, I need you to listen to me, we’re trying to help you, don’t try to move, you’re—_

“—going to be _fine_ , John,” said Cynthia, student-anaesthetist turned stage-makeup-artist turned torturer, squeezing the hands she'd captured.  “I spent half an hour putting that thing on, I don’t want you tearing it off a minute before the curtain goes up.  Now go on, get into position.”

John had agreed to this whole fiasco primarily for the chance to get talking to Cynthia, but he was definitely reconsidering that choice since apparently the only thing she’d wanted to do with his lips was glue hair onto them.  She’d insisted that the anaemic, threadbare moustache she was applying was ‘period-accurate for a young man’, despite John’s protests that it made him look forty-one rather than twenty-one. 

Chivvied along to his spot, John seated himself disconsolately on a treasure chest, and went to have a fortifying drink from the bottle in his hand, remembering too late that it was only a stage prop.  Bugger.  The overture was already playing, a constant atonal beep cutting through the background of the bustling noise and incomprehensible shouted instructions—surely they were meant to be quiet on set at this point? 

He looked around, momentarily displaced; the faces of the actors around him were blurred, somehow wrong from the ones he remembered, but also somehow more familiar.

The tubby Major-General they’d roped in from admin was watching from the wings, alongside the prematurely silver-haired Sergeant of Police and short, blonde Mabel, who gave him a grin and a thumbs up which heartened him a little. 

The first year chemist playing the Pirate King shot one final glare at the Major-General—with whom he had an inexplicably genuine feud which played out _hilariously_ on stage—and then frowned at John, apparently noting his nerves.  After a moment's observation, he mouthed 'Dangerous!' and gave him a huge wink.  Then he leapt up on top of a pile of crates and struck a theatrical pose with his hand on his sword, long coat trailing behind him and collar popped up to meet the jaunty angle of his tricorn hat. 

John stared up at him, momentarily transfixed.

_Okay, John, now you’re going to start feeling much better in about ten—_

“—seconds until the curtain,” hissed Cynthia from the wings and John shook it off, staring down into his empty bottle again.  “Break a leg everyone!  Nine, eight—”

_—seven, that’s right, calmly now.  Big breaths, deep as you can, four, three, two—_

John took a deep, full breath ready to sing… and the curtain went up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't recognise the musical, it is _The Pirates of Penzance_ , by Gilbert and Sullivan, one of my very very favourites. Frederick (the Pirate King's reluctant apprentice thanks to Ruth) is never portrayed with a moustache, so I am somewhat suspicious of Cynthia's motives for wanting to spend half an hour up close and personal with John's lips, even if John has taken this the wrong way.


	7. The least of these my bretheren

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waiting is hard work, particularly with Sherlock Holmes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 6th: Food, Glorious Food

“Do you want anything from the machine?” asked Sally, pushing herself to her feet.

It had been far too long since breakfast, and who knew how much longer it had been for him, but as always good manners were apparently wasted on Sherlock Holmes.

He favoured her with a filthy look from where he sat—if ‘sat’ could be applied to the folded ball he’d made of himself in the corner of the waiting room couch, once the frenetic pacing had finally died down. 

“At this point I think my window of opportunity to go and bathe in the blood of John's attacker has closed.  If you’re getting bored,” he told her cuttingly, “you can leave.”

“Uh, no,” said Sally pointedly. 

His eyes followed her gaze to where the fingers of his left hand were curled around the other inner arm, twitching and scratching.  If he thought she was going to leave him alone in a hospital—an agitated ex (or so he claimed) addict who could con his way into anywhere, inside a building packed with drugs needed for the critical care of the genuinely sick, while his, his, his whatever _John_ was was still in surgery—then he had another think coming.

“Oh, _dull_!” he huffed, and opened his posture to let her see clearly, exaggerating and adding a crisp vibrato to the motion on his improvised fingerboard.  “As though I'd need _you_ to leave first if I wanted to score.”

"Was that supposed to be reassuring?” she demanded.  “ _No_.  But I need food, even if I suppose you’re above all that.”

“Mmph,” was all he said, curling back into the couch again.

John, she knew, would have taken that as a ‘Yes’ and brought him back something.  Would have wordlessly left it beside him and pretended not to notice when it disappeared.

Sally shrugged, and left.  Sherlock Holmes was a grown man, and it was not her responsibility to make him eat anything he didn't want to.  

The Jammie Dodgers glared at her as she slotted in her money and keyed in her own purchase.  After she’d finished, standing in front of the vending machine holding her own fat crinkling package, she glared back at them. 

“Oh, fuck it,” she said.  John wasn’t here right now, and he would never know.  But _Sally_ would know.  And it wouldn’t make her proud.

She slammed the packet of biscuits down next to Sherlock with enough force that two of them broke.

“Why, Sally,” he said, giving them a look of distaste.  “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Oh, shut up, Freak,” said Sally, and took a big bite of her massive, powdered doughnut.  She was going to pay for it in the gym tomorrow, but right now she needed it.

Sherlock watched her chewing for a moment, then his eyes flicked down over the rest of her, weighing her up with that familiar objectifying gaze that drove her insane when he turned it on the living even more than on the dead.

“Not one word!” she warned him, brandishing a sugar-coated finger, doughnut crumbs spilling out of her mouth in her haste to cut him off.  Quickly, she swallowed the rest down before she spoke again.  “Not.   _One!”_

He smirked, objective achieved without even speaking, and opened the packet of biscuits.

“Mmm-mmm,” he said, chewing with ostentatious enjoyment.  " _Thank_ you, Sally.  These are delicious."

Sally slumped in her chair and took another bite of her doughnut, angry and victorious at once.

John had better get better soon.  Then putting up with this would be _his_ job again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from Matthew 25:37-40, which in the NKJV reads: _Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’_


	8. Penicillin for a Crime Wave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 7th: Epidemic

“Christ, _three_ more?” demanded John, tossing down the paper in distress, and then snatching it up again for a second look.  “I was only asleep for six hours!” 

The kettle clicked off, and he poured water into his mug without really looking, absorbed in the article, adding milk and disposing of the teabag on autopilot.

“Sherlock, are you getting _anywhere_ on this case?” he called.  “Sherlock?”

“Mm?” said Sherlock, looking up from where he sat surrounded by drifts of paper pinned to every available surface, spread over the floor—crime scene photographs, incident reports, security camera stills, a taped-together printout of at least a hundred thumbnail images of kitchen carving knives… For a man ostensibly in possession of a mind palace and a perfect memory for those things he deemed relevant, he produced an extraordinary amount of paper debris while he was thinking. 

John had taken one look at the disaster area when he stumbled downstairs after waking up, and decided to skip past Sherlock’s working mess without comment and make himself a cup of tea and breakfast before wading in to help.  Right now, though, he wasn’t sure he could eat anything.  He’d been exhausted last night, no use to anyone, and without tea and toast at very least, he’d hardly be any better.

Well, tea would have to do.  Three more people dead, while he’d taken a break to sleep.  God knew how many if would be if he waited until after he’d had breakfast to see if Sherlock had made any progress.

“Three more stabbings, Sherlock, in one night!” he pressed, edging as fully into the living room as was possible without stepping onto Sherlock’s chaotic attempt at floor-papering.  “He’s escalating!  The papers are calling him a one man crime epidemic!”

“Pfft,” scoffed Sherlock.  “Eleven stabbings do not make an epidemic.  Of course he’s widening his hunting ground—he’s got a taste for how easy it is now, and with every policeman in London cruising central Stratford, pulling over to question every bystander their small, prejudiced minds consider ‘suspicious’?  There’s an epidemic all right: of _stupidity_.  They’ve disrupted the only _useful_ part of his pattern, and made him that much harder to find.”

“Sherlock!” cried John.  “They’re trying to stop people being mugged for their valuables and left to die in an alley!  People are _scared_ , Sherlock!  Anyone could be next!”

“Yes, that _is_ the beauty of it, isn’t it?” mused Sherlock.  “He’s not just smart, he’s _random_.  Every time his type seems to be coming clear, he breaks it, so no discernible similarities to the victims: all races, genders, walks of life.  An uncomplicated MO, simple and quick, a bog-standard carving knife indistinguishable from the sort found in every kitchen in Britain—nothing _interesting_ about him except that he's avoided falling into the trap of overcomplicating things and leaving me  _evidence_.”

John closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of Sherlock's bright expression, and took a deep breath, trying to calm down.  It wasn’t helpful to get upset with him over these kinds of cases. 

“What can I do?” he asked.  “I don’t want to upset your system, but surely there’s some way to help.  Can I get some paper you're finished with out of your way?  If we’re talking epidemics, the living room looks like it’s been hit with a plague of paper.”

“Oh, this?”  Sherlock looked at the proliferation of papers around him as though unaware it was there.  “No, no, that was hours ago.  I said earlier you could tidy up, weren't you liste...pidemic,” he said, an abrupt change of direction. “Epidemic!”

John bit off the protest that he’d been asleep.  He knew that tone; knew that Sherlock was in the midst of a breakthrough and that meant even a breath in the wrong direction could be an inadvertent distraction.  Or, more probably, that an entire brass band could march through the living room completely unnoticed, but it was best to be safe.  Sherlock was standing stock still, staring into nothing, the only movement that of his fingers pushing invisible objects through the air.

“No, no, no—ah, I thought so.  Husband, boring.  No, no.  Disgruntled employee, boring.  Hmmm—no, definitely him.  No.  Husband again—surely divorce is safer?  And the last one—hmmm, could be the son, could be the son's wife.  I’d have to see their kitchen sink to know for sure.  Only seven belonging to the original killer… no, that one doesn’t fit either, not important…”

He brightened, straightened, and blinked the mind palace away.  “ _Six_ muggings, John,” he said.  “The rest don’t matter.”

“I’d say they rather matter to the victims!” 

“No no no,” said Sherlock, cutting a hand through the air.  “When you eliminate the irrelevant, the pattern is _obvious_.  Every high profile case has copy-cats, but with an MO this simple everyone’s come out of the woodwork for the chance to bump someone off without being noticed.  The longer he stays uncaught, the more there’ll be.  Crimes of opportunity, John!”  He paused, looking confused.  “Why aren’t you _dressed_?  Now’s not the time for a lazy lie-in!  We have a murderer to chase, an epidemic to stop!” 

Hurriedly, John pulled his clothes on over his pyjamas.  Breakfast could wait.  If this man wasn’t stopped today, there’d be more people dead.  

John wasn’t going to let that happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More than usually rushed for this one. Erk. Well, I did my best.


	9. The Wonder of Our Age

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caring for a Johnless Sherlock is a group effort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 8th: The Wonder of the Age

Greg knocked cautiously before entering.  He needn’t have bothered.  John appeared to be still unconscious and Sherlock didn’t even bother looking up.

“How’s he doing?” he asked, when he’d found a spot for the ‘Get Well’ balloons from the Yard that even Sally had chipped in for.  There was little other decoration in the room—some flowers, presumably from Mrs Hudson; Sherlock, draped dramatically over the room’s only chair, and that was it.

“Fine,” said Sherlock without raising his eyes from his phone.  “Close to waking up now.”

“The fever?”

“Down,” Sherlock dismissed it.  “Antibiotics; they’re the wonder of our age.”

“Huh,” said Greg.  “I would have said that was the Internet, but…”  He looked at John, pale and still, hooked up to tubes and wires and machines… apparently getting better.  “I see your point.  And… how are _you_ doing?”

“Fine,” repeated Sherlock, although he didn’t look fine.  He looked thin, and worn, and rumpled, like he hadn’t been home or eaten or possibly even moved for two days.  Mrs Hudson must have brought him something, though.  His phone charger, at the very least.

“I’ve got some cases for you?” said Greg, holding up the box of papers from under his arm.  It was practically everything he could scrounge up across every division; favours called in and the credit for solving them promised to the divisions he’d pulled them from.

“Solved them,” said Sherlock.

“What?  Not these ones, surely?”

“The Internet, Lestrade,” said Sherlock, turning his phone to show he was browsing the internal NSY system.  “It’s the wonder of our age.”

“Fantastic.”  Greg plopped the entire file down on John’s tray table and seated himself on the end of the bed, pulling it over his lap and spreading the files out.  “You can help me clear them, then.”

“Boring,” said Sherlock, apparently absorbed in his phone again.  Personally, Greg doubted it.  Sherlock had always been an extraordinary actor—but not, it appeared, where emotions were concerned.

“Not boring for John,” he tried. 

Sherlock’s eyes flickered to John for the first time that Greg had seen, and then immediately skittered away again as though when he looked, he saw far, far too many things. 

Sometimes, in the midst of a case that had sent him going cap in hand to Sherlock, asking for help, Greg envied Sherlock’s brain, his ability to size up anyone and _know_ them, to see the traces of history in the smallest of marks and reconstruct the whole. 

Sometimes, though, he knew better.

“If he’s close to the surface,” said Greg gently, “it might do him good to hear some deductions.  To hear your voice.  You know how much he loves it when you're clever.” 

Loves you, he didn’t say. 

Sherlock stared at him for a long moment, unimpressed, and then waved his hand as though granting a favour.

“Fine,” he said.  “It’s all fine.”  He gave the words peculiar emphasis, glancing at John again, before looking back at Greg, his eyes sharp.  “Which is first?”


	10. Rationality and Rationalisation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is waking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 9th: “Please stop petting the test subjects”

John opened his eyes and blinked up at the ceiling above.  He wasn’t feeling any pain, which meant… well, what it _meant_ was, was that the pain _should_ be bad enough that they’d pumped him to the brim with morphine just to make sure.

Although, apparently, there was a PCA button in his hand.  John shifted his fingers on it experimentally, testing the shape of the button without pressing it.

“You’re controlling the dose,” came Sherlock’s voice.  “You’ve clicked it eight times in the last half hour.  You're only just becoming aware enough to be conscious of it.”

John rolled his head to the side, slowly, to look at the figure seated almost on the other side of the room, apparently involved in something on his phone.

He stared at Sherlock, knowing only that the picture he was seeing didn’t seem right.  Sherlock had known when he moved the button, so Sherlock must have been watching him.  And Sherlock had been much closer than that before, he was sure.

He’d had strange dreams, while he’d been drifting on the edge of awareness.  Greg had been here—he was fairly certain that had happened.  Sherlock had been brilliant—that had the ring of truth, too.  Eventually the deductions had died down, Greg had left, and Sherlock had…

He frowned.  The button was in his right hand, that can’t have been the feeling he was thinking about.

“It was an experiment.”

Sherlock spoke without looking up.  His head was shrunk down inside his turned up collar and scarf as though he was in the path of a stiff wind, rather than safely nestled in a visitors chair in a hospital room.  

“Stimulus-response, very basic.”

It had been his _left_ hand.  John became aware he was flexing it curiously.

“Hardly worth mentioning.”

Fingers, gently stroking his.

“ _And_ you’re high as a kite.”

Lips pressed on the back of his hand.

“So _that_  bit probably didn’t happen at all.”

Sherlock.

John squeezed the button under his thumb as the tight sting in his chest began to swell.  The faint snick and whine of the infuser made Sherlock’s eyes snap up to John again, the worry in them momentarily vivid. 

“Y'can come back over here,” whispered John and carefully uncurled his fingers before the other man could look away again.  “S'okay to pet the test subject.”


	11. Turning in their Foxholes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John baits Sherlock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> July 10th: A Higher Power

“Well,” said John, smirking.  “It obviously _works.”_

“It doesn’t 'work', you didn’t even  _think_ it this time.  I didn’t give you a chance for any of that fatalistic rubbish.”

“I must have thought it.”  John shifted, letting Sherlock adjust the pillow behind him, and then leaned back on it.  “You’re always telling me that historical behaviour is the best guide to reconstructing an event.  I’m sure I would have thought it.”

Sherlock scoffed wordlessly.

“I’ve seen my chart, Sherlock,” pressed John, pleased to see he was getting under Sherlock’s skin.  “It was a miracle I made it to hospital.”

“The only miracle involved,” said Sherlock, “was the fact that _I_ was not only brilliant enough to realise the depths of your stupidity before it was too late, but brilliant enough to get the very good, semi-conscious doctor on the scene to tell me how to keep you alive.”

“Yes, about that.  A plastic bag out of the _rubbish_?” said John, shaking his head.  “It’s no wonder I got an infection—and very lucky I pulled through at all.  Or… would we really call that luck?  Maybe it was—”

“The chances of finding antibiotic-resistant bacteria in an alley, miles from a hospital, are practically nonexistant,” said Sherlock, unmoved.  “There was no luck involved at all, let alone… anyone else.”

John tipped his head towards the consulting detective beside him, trying in vain to keep a straight face.  “And yet the fact remains, even though I’ve never prayed for anything else in my life, apparently I consistently receive a response to 'Please, God, let me—'”

“John, I _know_ you don’t believe you were saved by _God_ ,” snapped Sherlock, and then scowled at having been successfully baited.  John giggled at his expression of outrage, the sudden pain in his chest more than worth the little bubble of happiness.  “Your death-bed dalliances with religion are an embarrassment to every atheist ever to inhabit a foxhole.  You are a medical man; start acting like it.  Anecdotal evidence may be compelling on a psychological level to some, but it's a _completely_ unscientific reason to infer any reality beyond the strictly material.”

“Certain of that, are you?” asked John, squeezing the long, thin fingers wrapped around his own.

Sherlock glanced down at their hands, folded together as they had been since John woke up, and then back up at John.

“Don’t be ridiculous, John,” he said, and squeezed back.  “The facts of _that_  case were in evidence far ahead of the theory.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title (and Sherlock's comment) reference the aphorism "there are no atheists in foxholes", the idea that in mortal danger even a professed atheist would believe in and call upon a higher power in hope of being saved, and thus there are no _real_ atheists. Most atheists find it extremely offensive.
> 
> * * *
> 
> This may actually be the end of this story. :) I might come back and add more later in the month if I'm inspired, but I think this is a nice stopping point and I've proved to myself that I can create an organically growing story instead of intricately planning everything from the beginning, which was the whole point.
> 
> I'm still planning to complete JWP month--but now I'm going to branch out and try some different worlds instead of staying in this one. Hope you've enjoyed!


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